Voices from the Appalachian Coalfields: Found Poems (Appalachian Writing: Working Lives) - Softcover

Yarrow, Mike; Yarrow, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933964812 ISBN 13: 9781933964812

Publisher: Bottom Dog Pr, 2015

Synopsis

The separate voices of coal miners, women as well as men, are heard in these interviews recorded half a century ago by Mike and Ruth Yarrow and painstakingly transcribed during the intervening years and put into poetry form. The photographs of Douglas Yarrow deepen the stories here. From the opening words you know the listening won't stop before these voices are brought to the ears of the world. Now here they are--courageous and compassionate despite the undertow of dangerous and unfair realities: a testimony to human dignity . . . from Katharine Boynton Payne, author of Silent Thunder: in the Presence of Elephants

About this title

From the Back Cover

As I write this, the death knell of Appalachian coal is being sounded. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon, coal mining will only support a few people in the region. Mike, Ruth, and Doug Yarrow have performed a great service here. In Voices from the Appalachian Coalfields they have with great care and skill preserved the voices and images of the men and women who performed the dangerous work of mining in order to power the nation through the 20th century. Coal miners have received little thanks for their sacrifice. May these voices remind us that the remaining miners deserve support as they face an uncertain future.~Dense ~Denise Giardina, author of Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

This book contains the voices of Appalachian coal miners, both men and women, and coal miners? wives. Their words are from 225 interviews that my husband and I recorded in the 1970?s and 1980?s in the Appalachian coalfields, largely in Fayette, Raleigh, Mercer and McDowell counties of West Virginia.



As these voices will tell you, underground coal mining is dark, dangerous work. It is a world of totally dark tunnels, often dripping wet, where the only lights are the beams from hard hats. Miners take care not to shine their light in others? eyes. A section of the mine a mine (often referred to as ?mines?) may consist of five main entry tunnels, with crosscuts between them, about 100 feet apart. Some will be blocked off with fire-resistant brattice cloth, or more permanently with concrete blocks. These partitions, with the roar of huge fans, force fresh air to the work face and pull dust and dangerous gases out. Near the big machines that mine the coal in the ?face? of the section, and pin the ?top? or layers above the tunnel, the noise is deafening. Miners communicate with shouts and signals with their headlamps

Edition details

• Publisher: Bottom Dog Pr
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1933964812
• ISBN 13: 9781933964812
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 148